Networking Your Website

Using Facebook to Market your Business

Did you know that 50% of Americans between the ages of 20 and 30 have a Facebook account? Facebook currently has over 70 million active users and is quickly catching up with MySpace in terms of unique visitors per day. One of the reasons for Facebook's recent growth is that it made its platform available to developers, which allowed 3rd party applications to be used within Facebook's user interface. This has people excited, and has opened up more possibilities for you as a marketer to network your business.

So what is Facebook? Facebook is a social networking site where people can share videos, photos, ideas, and connect with other people.

To get started on Facebook, you need to first create a profile. This should be a personal profile, and not a business profile. After you create your personal profile, you can begin to network.

Most likely you will already have many friends that are using Facebook. You can go to the 'Friends' tab and navigate to the 'Friend Finder' or to the 'Invite Friends' section to begin your networking. You can also use the search function to find friends.

You can make new friends by joining groups. I would start by joining a few groups that you are interested in. In these groups, you can post on a wall or participate in discussions. Be sure to post something that is relevant to that group. You don't want to be spammy and start promoting your business in these groups. Instead, post something relevant that attracts people to you. You can invite people in these groups to be your friend.

I recommend that you also create a 'page'. You can create as many pages as you want. This page can be about your business, about a cause, about a product, etc. These pages, unlike your profile pages, are accessible to the public, and are not hidden behind a login. Your friends can be invited to become 'fans' of that page.

In your Facebook account, you will notice that you have a news feed, which lists your friend's updates. When YOU make updates, YOUR updates will appear on YOUR friend's news feeds (depending on their settings of course). This will help keep you 'top of mind' amongst your friends.

Once you get involved with Facebook, you'll start finding out about many of the 3rd party applications that are available. This may get a little overwhelming at times. Personally, I would ignore most of them, and not implement the FunWall or SuperWall, as those can cause a lot of spam on your profile page.

A 3rd party integration I would suggest you use, is to integrate your Twitter account with your Facebook account. Your Twitter updates will then automatically update your Facebook profile; as well you're your friend's news feeds. You can set this up via the 'settings' section of your Twitter account.

You can view my Facebook profile. Who knows...maybe we can become friends. :)

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